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Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Heart Convent of Houston, 1986. Pp. xiv+782. Foreword, intro-duction, photographs, illustrations, notes, appendices, selectedbibliography, index. $24.)On January 7 the Catholic church honors a Spanish scholar, preacher,and teacher, St. Raymond of Penyafort. A teacher at twenty and a doc-tor of both canon and civil law at thirty, Raymond happily taught andstudied into his fifties, only to become St. Dominic's chosen successor ashead of the order in 1221. Raymond's health collapsed and the Domin-icans returned him to his humbler routine, whereupon Raymond ofPenyafort lived into his one hundredth year, around 1270o. Just as theexample of Raymond of Penyafort adds lustre to the life of doingthe ordinary, so do the examples of the Dominican women who fill thepages of Sister Sheila Hackett's book.The people who officially declared their independence of Mexico onMarch 2, 1836, had included as a unique reason the failure of Mexico"to establish any public system of education, although possessed of al-most boundless resources," that is, public domain. In 1838 PresidentSam Houston of the Republic of Texas pronounced it a duty to set asidepublic lands "to the purpose of general education." A Texas law of 184oassigned 17,712 acres as the permanent endowment for each county'spublic school system. The Constitution of 1845 accepted the principleof general taxation for education, but, through World War II, the mostcommitted and productive educational facilities in many areas of Texaswere denominational schools.Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, states: "I can easier teach twentywhat were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mineown teaching." Sister Sheila Hackett proves that twenty Dominicanwomen and their successors bridged that gap in her candid interpre-tation of their experiences in Texas, beginning in Galveston in Sep-tember, 1882.Despite the vigor, wit, and sensitivity with which the writer handlesher materials, the story she chronicles might tax the reader's credulity.Her history, which spans one hundred years, testifies to the patience,fortitude, and faith of the Dominican women in the face of innumer-able crises and challenges: the Galveston storm of 19oo, the Ku KluxKlan, the influenza epidemic of 1918, recruiting personnel in Irelandin 1914 as the "guns of August" were going off in France, the ever-increasing cost of education, and the perpetual inadequacy of funds.Climaxing the first century of the order in Texas is the appearance ofits first full-time artist. A Texas-born Dominican, she has a studio inwhich to work, display, and live, and has received international acclaimfor her liturgical art.